The European Union agreed Thursday to sign a sweeping new free trade agreement with South Korea —
its first with an Asian trade partner —
after Italy removed objections that had threatened to block the deal.
Politicians and officials welcomed the announcement as an important signal for free trade and
evidence that protectionist pressures are being resisted, despite the uncertainty in the global economy.
TPG, one of the world’s biggest private equity firms, will be teaming up with the municipal governments of two of China’s biggest cities
to raise nearly $1.5 billion and create its first funds denominated entirely in Chinese currency.
By making deals with the two cities — Shanghai and Chongqing — TPG, which will be the sole manager of each fund,
is in a position to be one of the biggest investment firms in the Chinese market.
For more than a decade, Beijing has kept the value of the renminbi, also known as the yuan, more or less constant to the dollar,
a strategy that critics say increases the price of American exports to China and fuels the rapidly growing trade deficit with Beijing.
Lost in the noise, however, is the question of whether de-linkage would actually have any effect on the trade deficit.
On this, the United States’ 40-year history of pressuring Japan to let the yen appreciate against the dollar is instructive.
In our Feature today, we attacked the arrogance of the so-called quants,
the “whiz kids” who astounded Wall Street & the world when things were good,
and then blamed the market when things went south – way south.
So it’s with some interest in alternative approaches to investing that we note that
IT’S easier to steal a million dollars a dollar at a time than a million dollars once.
So goes an old saying.
If the allegations in a civil case filed in a federal court in Chicago hold up, you can even haul off $10 million if you stick to $9 here or 20 cents there.
The suit, filed in March by the Federal Trade Commission, contends that over at least four years,
“The whole point of social media is that we trust our friends, our network for answers to questions, recommendations, information needs,”
says Brian Ascher, a partner at Venrock, a noted venture capital firm in Palo Alto, Calif.
“Social media can contain the answer. There is value in all the stuff being shared, if you can find it.”
In short, he said, the key concept is data on demand:
Nearly a decade ago, when budget deficits ballooned in the United States,
it was widely said that Washington — like Blanche DuBois in “A Streetcar Named Desire” — “depended on the kindness of strangers.”
In Washington’s case, foreigners — mostly foreign governments — stepped in to buy most of the new Treasury securities being issued.
Budget deficits have ballooned again, but the story is different this time.
In a bearish note to clients in late August, Morgan Stanley’s chief strategist, Gerard Minack, warned that
a housing bubble in Australia could be pricked if the banks tightened credit or middle-class landlords started losing money and decided to sell.
He believes owner-occupiers have too much debt, and that investors are riskily relying on capital gains to repay their loans and interest.
Compounding the problem was ill-advised policy such as the government’s first home-buyers grant,
Not surprisingly, it became known on a Friday – the day when companies always try to bury bad news – in late August,
when most Americans, at least, are sadly looking towards the looming end of summer vacations.
But sources revealed one of the two most notorious corporations – past / future employers of then-in-power Dick Cheney / George W Bush –
